To ask what percentage of your salary you save?

[whereiscaroline]

I was quite crap with money in my early twenties and now trying to rectify that. I'm trying to save 10% per month of my take home pay but it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere fast. It's going to take a long time to even save an emergency fund. I'm just wondering if I'm not being ruthless enough with cutting expenses and saving.

What percentage of your salary do you save?

We pay off our household bills then on a good month split what's left 80:20. Save 80 and spend 20. On a lower income month we'll push the ratio down so we get more to spend.

We probably put about 15% of our joint pay into savings and we also put the child benefit money into a separate account too which we have never used.

At the moment, as much as we can. 30% of gross into pension, 10% into savings. As a single person I saved 70% of my income.

Big problem to come with this under universal credit for low income family, which removes any incentive to save because if you have savings, you won't qualify.

Sadly none.

About 3% at the moment.
10-15% is what I normally save and will get back to that when we get out of a tight spot

Percentages are pointless unless you know what it’s a percentage of, to give context

It’s far harder to save when you’re on a low income and every penny is needed for day to day expenses.

About 50% if we can but with building work a broken car and a baby on the way im not sure we will continue to manage it!

0% in savings unless we're saving for something specific but 9.3% goes to my pension.

50%. Some of this goes to overpaying the mortgage rather than saving accounts.

We both pay into a pension, but other than that, none. Paying off debts first.

Currently (excluding pension) around 25%, most going into my company shares where I get either B2G1F or reduced by around 20%, 5 year commitment to be tax and NI free but hopefully will help me retire a little earlier (once we get ds(14) through education and/or settled in first job).

I'm older and now mortgage free so have a bit spare just now.

The day before payday, whatever is left I put into my savings as I clearly don't need it.

Between 50-60% but we are having renovation work done and I'm due on maternity leave end of January. DH saves about 25%.

We got our bills right down when DH was made redundant 2 yrs ago so even though he's been back working for 18 months we didn't go back to spending so all extras now go into savings.

% isn’t going to help really.

I save 37.5% of my net pay which is 50% of my disposable income after essential bills.

But by savings, I mean save to pension - and I only have that much net pay available because of a high personal tax allowance which HMRC increased based on my projected pension payments this year. Basically - a chunk of what I save is actually tax relief.

Don’t worry about your % and don’t fix it. If you have no emergency fund, could be good to save save save for a year, but then allow yourself more fun money after. Benefit of this is that you get used to having less!

My tip for saving: if you’re lucky enough to get any pay rise, or tax rates change in your favour (likely after the budget this week) then save all of the increase. You don’t miss what you’ve never had!

For “unexpected” money - like birthday money or things I sell on eBay - I always save at least 50%. If it wasn’t expected, 50% of it is still a treat!

0% saving is a luxury unfortunately I can't afford.

15% of take home. No idea how much DH saves (we have separate accounts to maximise interest). We then also save some jointly but that is monthly dependent. We've not been very good in the last 3 months though as we've been doing some renovating.

In January I won't be able to save anything though as I'll be going on mat leave.

About a third (after pension has been deducted) but some is for short term savings for house repairs, holidays etc, probably about 15% there and about 15% for longer term, although some of this will be decimated by my upcoming maternity leave and I won't be able to save anything for the best part of a year

Between myself and my partner we can usually save about 15% each month on a good month as I work PT (about £400). Although not been able to do so much recently as we moved from a flat to a house (so needed to buy loads of stuff, plus moving fees etc...), bought a new car outright and replaced a car cam-belt and had a service etc...

We live comfortably enough, we don't have credit cards and we don't buy lots of clothes and material things for ourselves - just what we need. Generally we are happiest being at home together of an evening and on the weekend we tend to do free things like ride bikes in the country, walk along the seaside or visit friends houses. Food shopping we keep a close eye on and try not to buy stuff we know we wont eat. We eat out maybe once a month, at somewhere like the Harvester or similar and we have maybe 3 takeaways a month but mostly kebab which is the cheapest type isn't it!

We would like to try and go on 1 holiday a year but I don't know if its Brexit or something but the holidays we looked at and went on last year seem to be at least 30% more expensive this year and I wont compromise and go on holiday in the UK or something, I would rather not go this year and go away next year!

Wow. We don’t save anything. We can’t save anything. Our rent (SW London), childcare and transport expenses are so high that they eat into a significant proportion of our joint income, and the rest is spent on other essentials like food, utilities etc.

None I guess if I have money left I book a holiday
Just on my way home from holiday 2 in October then 6 days at work and off on the next one.
I don’t want to be the richest person in the graveyard why save?

It’s different for everyone I’m a high earner so I save about 40% of take home per month, DP earns less but it’s about 50%

It should really but a lot more but we socialise/holiday a lot and I like clothes and make up

In my 20s it was much less, sometimes it was less than £100 pm

I recommend you:
-keep plugging away at it and invest in a med/high risk stocks and shares isa to maximise growth

• get on moneysavingexpert and review all insurance and utilities
• overhaul your food budget
• do a budget to see where your cash is going

We save 75% at the moment; it was 85% pre-children for about 5 years. At the moment we are very frugal and have high incomes and already paid off the mortgage but it’s not sustainable forever as we’ll need a bigger home.

About 25% and I spilt it between short term savings, eg: holidays, days out, stuff in the house that might need replacing and then put the other half into an account I never touch. Luckily we've managed to build up quite a big chunk in that which we'd only use for moving house or something really big.

I used to save before we got married and i've concerted DH into a saver now too. Even small amounts help if you can manage it.

About 5%

But that's less than my debts so not sure why I bother...

I don't know anyone who can afford to save!